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francis_s

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francis_s

Favorite Thing About SEO:

I love acronyms!

Bio:

Francis Skipper is the Director of Technology for Catalyst Online, a Healthcare Marketing Agency. His job is to be a full time SEO, salesman, IT geek, programmer, blogger, techie and gadget guru who never sleeps and is always #1 at everything.
His background includes a chemistry degree, a graduate degree in business, several years in pharma and biotech and learning to write in the third person.

Reputation Management is most definitely case by case, but I think it's necessary and useful for individuals as well as companies trying to put their best (online) foot forward. The SERP's have become the new "home page" for a lot of brands. By doing a search in Google, a user is presented with a particular view of a brand in the SERP listings- and this is *before* they ever make it to the homepage of that brand. If 8 out 10 results are negative then that user may get a tainted view of the brand before the brand company (or individual) has a chance to engage that user with their website.

It's a slippery slope, for sure, because we've all seen the "dell hell", "killer coke" and "iams killer" examples, so your own moral compass has to be the guide. I agree with one of the above commenters who said that Google is the judge of what content is ranked highly, not the content provider. Therefore, I prefer the term "outcompeting negative brand messaging" to removing or deleting items. But then again, I'm probably a scoundrel.